Russian mogul wins European vote

BRUSSELS (JTA)  The
election this week of the first Eastern European to the helm of the European
Jewish Congress is fueling speculation that the 20-year-old organization will
expand its focus beyond issues relating to anti-Semitism, Israel and other Middle
East flashpoints.

Moshe Kantor, president of
the Russian Jewish Congress, scored a large victory in the Tuesday vote that
capped what had evolved into a bitter contest with the incumbent, Tunisian-born
Frenchman Pierre Besnainou.

Kantor, 53, will lead the
only pan-European Jewish organization devoted primarily to lobbying politicians
and the European Union on behalf of Europe’s 3.5 million Jews, often on Middle
East-related issues and the need to combat anti-Semitism.

While Kantor does not
plan for the EJC to abandon these issues, he has displayed a preference for
engaging politicians behind the scenes and has dedicated more resources to
promoting Jewish cultural and educational causes.

Kantor’s activities and style
stand in vivid contrast to those of Besnainou, who devoted his energies to
attacking anti-Semitism and pushing E.U. leaders to be harsher on
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad .

Kantor, a billionaire
philanthropist who has resided in Geneva for 14 years, has promised to expand
the 41-country organization’s activities into the field of education and
culture, improve fundraising and lessen its financial dependence on the World
Jewish Congress.

In the end, it seemed that although EJC members rarely miss a
chance to express their solidarity with Israel, they wanted equal focus on
their specific European problems.

“It is the job of
Israeli ambassadors to speak on behalf of Israel to the European Union,”
said Kobi Benatoff of Italy, a past EJC president. “We need to support
Israel, but we speak on behalf of European Jewry.”

Kantor’s election was slammed by Leonid Nevzlin, a Russian tycoon who moved to Israel to avoid
what he describes as politically motivated criminal charges aimed at punishing
him for opposing Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“It is regretful that
Mr. Kantor was elected as the president of the EJC since there are substantial
doubts as to his true intentions in this position,” Nevzlin said in a
statement.

The statement went on to say that an EJC president “with strong ties and a bias to the Kremlin,
which increasingly has regressed to authoritarianism and shows a lack of
respect to European democratic values, is unlikely to contribute to the
development of European Jewry and its ties with Israel.”

Throughout much of the
campaign for the EJC presidency, opponents painted Kantor as a Putin
loyalist. Besnainou claimed that Kantor’s election would hurt Israel and
European Jewry because he would be unwilling to harm his good relationship with
the Kremlin. Kantor is among the wealthiest people in Russia with an estimated
net worth of $1.7 billion.

One French delegate noted
that Kantor was silent when Putin met with Hamas
representatives in Moscow after the Islamist party’s election victory last year and condemned
Israel for using disproportionate force in last summer’s Lebanon war.

But Kantor told JTA on Tuesday that “cooperation and not confrontation” are the best tools
for influencing Kremlin policy.

“Putin came to Krakow
for the World Holocaust Forum and apologized for the existence of anti-Semitism
in Russia,” he said, referring to an event that was part of Auschwitz
liberation ceremonies. “We invited him to be there, and this is the
concrete result of our efforts.”

Kantor did not respond publicly to any of the attacks on him in the Israeli press by Besnainou or his
supporters. Instead he promoted his funding of massive heritage projects, such
as the $6 million Auschwitz commemoration in 2005 attended by 70 heads of
state.

In Tuesday’s election, with the voting weighted per country, Kantor received 55 votes to 30 for Besnainou. There were two abstentions.

Some voters praised the
image of integration between Eastern and Western Europe.

“We are way ahead of
the European Union,” said the president of the
Swiss Federation for Jewish Communities, Alfred Donath, who has known Kantor
for more than a decade. “Russia might actually join the EU in a decade, but now we
Europeans have a Russian leader. And why not?”

“I think Mr. Kantor’s
win is a good for European Jewry because he has a fresh vision,” said Adam
Dawson, who serves on the executive of the British Board of Jewish Deputies,
Britain’s Jewish umbrella organization.

An engineer and scientist
who made his fortune with a fertilizer company he bought for little money from the Russian
state in the early 1990s, Kantor is short on political lobbying experience. One
of his campaign promises was to appoint a vice president who will be responsible
for E.U. relations.

What impressed Dawson and other voters, however,
was that Kantor also wanted to station an EJC representative in Brussels, where
the WJC already has an office.

In the end several EJC
delegates told JTA they supported Kantor because they liked his financial
support for Jewish causes. Last year he put up $10 million for the European
Jewish Fund, which helps communities develop Jewish cultural and educational
programs.

The spirit of cooperation
Kantor espouses is much needed as well within the EJC, according to several
members who complained that representatives spend more time fighting about bylaws or
Eastern-Western divides than discussing substantive issues.

WJC President Ronald Lauder and the chairman of that organization’s governing board, Matthew Bronfman, both
attended the conference where the vote was held. They gave speeches
outlining the threats to European Jewry  unprecedented levels of
anti-Semitism and Iran’s nuclear program, among others.

The latter is an issue
on which Kantor has taken action. Notably through the European Jewish Fund, he organized
a multimillion-dollar conference of experts in Luxembourg in May. Russians, Israelis and Americans discussed the threat of nuclear proliferation.

Kantor has promised to find new sources of revenue for the organization, so it can also focus on a
passion he shares with Lauder: education.

For Kantor, the threat of
assimilation is just as serious as the threat of anti-Semitism.

He would like to fund
programs that instill Jewish pride and promote Jewish
writers, scientists and politicians throughout Europe  to Jews and non-Jews.

Several of those who did not
support Kantor, including Richard Prasquier, who leads Western Europe’s largest
communal body, the CRIF umbrella group in France, said he could still
prove to be a positive force.

“If I feel he is too soft about Israel or Iran, I
will certainly say so,” Prasquier said. “When I spoke with him, he
assured me he would very thoughtful about that, and Iran is very high on his
agenda. We have to take him on his word. The worst thing we can do is have a
fight.”

Dinah Spritzer is JTA's correspondent in Prague. She has been covering the former Eastern European bloc since 1990 and currently serves as the news editor of The Prague Post. The former Europe editor for Travel Weekly, she also contributes to several other publications, including The Independent on Sunday, Conde Nast Traveler and several guidebooks on the Czech Republic.